From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?UTF-8?B?QW5kcmVhcyBSw7ZobGVy?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Do we need a "Stevens" book? Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:47:04 +0200 Message-ID: <4C506D18.3040909@easy-emacs.de> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1280339004 14080 80.91.229.12 (28 Jul 2010 17:43:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:43:24 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jul 28 19:43:22 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OeAf2-0003hl-Qz for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:43:21 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:39944 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OeAf2-0004h0-9W for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:43:20 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=54813 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OeAeR-0004fp-66 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:42:44 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OeAeN-0000PI-PU for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:42:43 -0400 Original-Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.126.186]:63683) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OeAeN-0000Oq-Cr for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:42:39 -0400 Original-Received: from [192.168.178.27] (p5DDB0A87.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [93.219.10.135]) by mrelayeu.kundenserver.de (node=mreu2) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0MXCmv-1OSG323sNZ-00Wjm4; Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:42:34 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100711 Thunderbird/3.0.6 In-Reply-To: X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:hk2XOgimjH5ZYCnpP7ugq+1YFUwNQ9NXIzR4w9Oik+7 3HxiyNY4IshGSSl4353RWcYmZwaaXThPZTOfRXjyDZHwVYaDxf biDjZp9YKUzjZQN5sKPvRf8nMgU9TdYRHNgWNjIaiqJ+AqXzdQ tbMvSC4XY78GSUlWlTMGiHFq15APCSgBSeGzdBG8sRqquNr9sx nh5hia/fwLyc78y4Y8oMuUQJPjgvWfVnaZBnUP3r+o= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:74326 Archived-At: Am 28.07.2010 18:42, schrieb Olwe Melwasul: > I've not gotten very far with this idea; no one seems interested, but > I'll try it here anyway... > > It seems to me that Emacs needs a W. Richard Stevens-style book. As > you may know, Stevens wrote the "Advanced Programming in the UNIX(R) > Environment" textbook that many of us used in college. Or maybe Emacs > needs something along the lines of the many "Linux gnarly/wooly > internals" books. Anyway, I would love to see a book that got into the > nitty-gritty of Emacs/elisp -- just like you see discussed here every > day on the help-gnu-emacs list. > > Here's an example: comint. How do you effectively use comint? When > should you use comint? Okay, I can Google around and find one-off blog > discussions here and there about comint; I can read them all; I can > get confused; I can kludge something together ... and then find out > later that what I've done (as well as bloggers A, B, and C) is really > not "best practice" use of comint, i.e., that how I've used comint is > overkill or could have been done much simpler with.el. > Wouldn't it be nice to have one go-to source/book that thrashed out > comint usage once and for all? > > Just skimming through all the elisp material (books, Internet, etc.), > it seems like a hodge-podge on a continuum between gems and junk just > waiting for a clear-speaking Richard Stevens to whip it all into > shape. Sure, the "official" texts will get you pretty far, but no way > are you ready to be a "best-practices" guru. The printed books seem > more like a "cookbook" than a real Stevens-style book. Maybe I'm all > wrong, but I think I like what the Racket/PLT people are doing. They > seem to be whipping the Scheme hodge-podge into a decent > best-practices, best-tools order. > > Personally I've been admiring Emacs from afar for quite some time. I'm > really an Emacs/elisp newbie, but I've got a writing/technical writing > background. If what I'm saying strikes a chord, maybe I could be a > receiver/collector of a "best-practices-slash-wooly internals" sorta > book project. It would be a free/GNU sorta thing of course ... and > please don't say "I don't think there'd be enough interest in it." > > Olwe > > Hi, would welcome such an effort. However, some obstacles are in the way: a basic of Emacs is it's extensibility also for non-programmers. Everyone is encouraged to read Robert Chassell's Emacs Lisp Intro, to try out something. Thats a great pleasure and source of inovation. Naturally, as many hackers are not professional programmers, a kind of wilderness grows out of these efforts. Nothing wrong so far IMHO. After that I'd welcome a kind of mutually code critic, as far as it's not used to intimidate neebies. BTW started a kind of bill-board collecting examples, best practises here: http://repo.or.cz/w/elbb.git Best regards, Andreas -- https://code.launchpad.net/~a-roehler/python-mode https://code.launchpad.net/s-x-emacs-werkstatt/